Land Use
First food: business of taste
Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …Dealing with deep uncertainties in landslide modelling for disaster risk reduction under climate change
Landslides have large negative economic and societal impacts, including loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Slope stability assessment is a vital tool for landslide risk management, but high levels of uncertainty often challenge its usefulness. Uncertainties are associated with the numerical model used to assess slope stability and its …Modelling the future impacts of climate and land-use change on suspended sediment transport in the River Thames (UK)
The effects of climate change and variability on river flows have been widely studied. However the impacts of such changes on sediment transport have received comparatively little attention. In part this is because modelling sediment production and transport processes introduces additional uncertainty, but it also results from the fact that, …Biofuels may be good for the climate — but they could be bad for bees, research says
New research has added to the growing list of challenges facing the nation’s pollinators. A study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that agricultural changes in the Northern Great Plains — particularly the expansion of corn and soybean cropland — could be putting a …Judgement of the National Green Tribunal regarding widening a stretch of 35 km road adjoining the Megamalai Reserved Forest in Theni district, Tamil Nadu, 01/09/2016
Judgement of the National Green Tribunal (Southern Zone, Chennai) in the matter of M. Saravanan Vs Government of Tamil Nadu - Environment and Forest Department dated 01/09/2016 regarding widening a stretch of 35 km road adjoining the Megamalai Reserved Forest in Theni district, Tamil Nadu. National Green Tribunal in its …Grasslands, wetlands, and agriculture: the fate of land expiring from the Conservation Reserve Program in the Midwestern United States
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest agricultural land-retirement program in the United States, providing many environmental benefits, including wildlife habitat and improved air, water, and soil quality. Since 2007, however, CRP area has declined by over 25% nationally with much of this land returning to agriculture. Despite this …Ministry plans to guide Asian nations in better use of land
The land ministry plans to draft a multilateral framework that could help developing nations in Asia make better use of their land through careful planning, government sources said. The sources said the ministry will propose the framework at the U.N. Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in …Earth's surface water change over the past 30 years
Earth's surface gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years, including 20,135 km2 of water and 33,700 km2 of land in coastal areas. Here, we analyse the gains and losses through the Deltares Aqua Monitor — an open tool that detects land and …Weakening of Indian summer --monsoon rainfall due to changes in land use land cover
Weakening of Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) is traditionally linked with large-scale perturbations and circulations. However, the impacts of local changes in land use and land cover (LULC) on ISMR have yet to be explored. Here, we analyzed this topic using the regional Weather Research and Forecasting model with European …Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation
Human pressures on the environment are changing spatially and temporally, with profound implications for the planet’s biodiversity and human economies. Here we use recently available data on infrastructure, land cover and human access into natural areas to construct a globally standardized measure of the cumulative human footprint on the terrestrial …Biodiversity: The ravages of guns, nets and bulldozers
The threats of old are still the dominant drivers of current species loss, indicates an analysis of IUCN Red List data by Sean Maxwell and colleagues. Original SourceRevegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits
Revegetation of degraded ecosystems provides opportunities for carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. However, vegetation expansion in water-limited areas creates potentially conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans. Current understanding of these competing demands is still limited. Here, we study the semi-arid Loess Plateau in China, where the ‘Grain …Study: Bioenergy decisions involve wildlife habitat and land use trade-offs
New research from North Carolina State University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) finds that choosing how to meet bioenergy goals means making trade-offs about which wildlife species and ecosystems will be most impacted. The work focuses on the southeastern United States, but yields general insights that could inform bioenergy …Saving the world's terrestrial megafauna
From the late Pleistocene to the Holocene and now the so-called Anthropocene, humans have been driving an ongoing series of species declines and extinctions. Large-bodied mammals are typically at a higher risk of extinction than smaller ones. However, in some circumstances, terrestrial megafauna populations have been able to recover some …Land used for palm oil could double without damaging forests: researchers
RIO DE JANEIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The area covered by palm oil plantations worldwide could double without damaging protected areas or sensitive forests, Austrian researchers said on Tuesday. Researchers from the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) studied satellite maps from Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America …Judgement of the National Green Tribunal regarding illegally cultivating Catfish in agricultural lands, Telangana, 27/07/2016
Judgement of the National Green Tribunal (Southern Zone, Chennai) in the matter of Sajeev Bharadwaj Vs State of Telangana & Others dated 27/07/2016 regarding alleged environmental violations committed by persons illegally involved in the rearing of banned African Catfish in the areas of Gadwal, Dharoor, Alampur, Atmakur, Kollapur, ltikyala, Wadapally, …“Ecological recession”: Researchers say biodiversity loss has hit critical threshold across the globe
An international team of researchers has concluded that biodiversity loss has become so severe and widespread that it could affect Earth’s ability to sustain human life. The researchers examined 2.38 million records of 39,123 terrestrial species collected at 18,659 sites around the world to model the impacts on biodiversity of …As pastoralist land shrinks, Maasai women take livestock lead
ENAIBOSHO, Kenya, July 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On a cold afternoon, three women are gathering dry grass and feeding it into a hand-operated baling machine. In no time, a bale of hay emerges and is hefted onto a waiting pile partially covered with plastic sheeting. The three Maasai women …Judgement of the National Green Tribunal regarding mining operations on the hills situated in Village Damkhed, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, 26/07/2016
Judgement of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Rashid Noor Khan Vs State of Madhya Pradesh & Others dated 26/07/2016 regarding mining operations on the hills situated in Village Damkhed, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh and also construction activity in the vicinity of Kaliyasot River.Nature of forest fires in Uttarakhand: frequency, size and seasonal patterns in relation to pre-monsoonal environment
Man-made forest fires in the traditionally populated zone (about 800–2000 m altitude) are common in much of the Central Himalaya, and are a major topic of environmental debate. This study based on an analysis of data of the State Forest Department at Uttarakhand on incidence of forest fires shows that …Conservation effectiveness across state and community forests: the case of Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya, India
Despite decades of concerted global conservation efforts, biodiversity loss continues unabated, making it important to assess the effectiveness of conservation approaches. Using forest cover as a proxy for conservation effectiveness, we analysed land-use and land-cover changes across a community and a state forest of Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya, India. Forest losses …